- Letters: R/ABCKLO
- Words: 42
- Points: 170
- Pangrams: 1
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The table provides clues for the roots of words in today's NY Times Spelling Bee. You're responsible for prefixes, suffixes,
tense changes, plurals, doubling consonants before suffixes, and alternate spellings of roots. An exception:
since Sam won't allow S, when the root contains an S, the clue may be for a plural or suffixed form. "Mice" for example.
If a clue isn't self-explanatory, try googling it. And if AI tries to be too helpful, try prefixing your search with "word for" or "word meaning".
The TL;DR about the site comes after the table.
Past clues are available here |
Today's puzzle
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Table content
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| answers covered | answer's first letter | answer's length | clue for root (answer may need prefix, suffix, tense change, alt spelling, ...) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A | 5 | Tree garden; its “Day” is the last Friday in April in many places |
| 1 | A | 4 | Musically, “with the bow,” or gas brand |
| 1 | B | 4 | Sharp projection near end of fishhook or on top of wire fence; start of Streisand name |
| 1 | B | 7 | Bartender's assistant, compound |
| 1 | B | 8 | Mexican BBQ; origin of English word via Texas; starts with 1st 5 letters of “Jeannie” actress Eden name |
| 1 | B | 4 | Dog vocalization, or tree skin |
| 1 | B | 7 | Soldier’s lodging |
| 1 | B | 4 | Wild pig |
| 1 | B | 8 | A framework, typically with rails or bars, for holding reading material, compound |
| 1 | B | 4 | Lout, NOT wild pig |
| 1 | B | 5 | Small stream, noun; or tolerate, verb |
| 1 | C | 4 | Bread starch avoided on many diets, slang abbr. |
| 1 | C | 5 | Tree or shrub whose pods are often used to make a chocolate substitute |
| 1 | C | 5 | Actress Burnett with a variety show, or a Xmas song |
| 1 | C | 5 | Venomous snake with a hood |
| 1 | C | 6 | Cloth or leather strip a dog or cat wears around its neck |
| 1 | C | 5 | Red, green, blue, purple, etc. |
| 1 | C | 5 | Reef building marine invertebrates, a deep pink hue, or a sea off Australia |
| 1 | C | 4 | Wine bottle stopper, originally made from the bark of certain trees, noun; or insert such a stopper, verb, gerund form is a pangram |
| 1 | C | 7 | Small Toyota sedan, or the inner ring of flower petals |
| 1 | C | 6 | Animal pen, or “O.K. …” gunfight site |
| 1 | C | 4 | Crustacean with claws & eye stalks |
| 1 | C | 5 | Slang for cocaine you smoke, or fracture line, noun + adj. |
| 1 | C | 5 | Frog sound, or slang for “die” |
| 1 | C | 4 | Holey shoe, or alligator relative abbr. |
| 1 | C | 5 | Slow-cooking “pot”, usually earthenware, noun; or preserve in such a pot, verb, gerund form is a pangram |
| 1 | C | 5 | Lawbreaker, slang (Nixon: “I’m not a …”), or shepherd’s staff, noun; or bend something, especially a finger, verb, gerund form is a pangram |
| 1 | L | 5 | Hard work (manual…), or UK political party of Tony Blair (they add a U) |
| 1 | L | 4 | Small, ground-dwelling songbird (meadow…), or something done for fun (he entered the race on a …) |
| 1 | O | 7 | Metal gadget on a boat that holds the thing with which you row, compound |
| 1 | O | 4 | Green veg in gumbo |
| 1 | O | 4 | Spoken (… exam), or by mouth (… surgery), adjective |
| 1 | O | 4 | Killer “whale” |
| 1 | R | 4 | Frame used to lock up bikes, set up billiards balls, organize spices, or dry dishes, e.g. |
| 1 | R | 4 | Lion “shout” |
| 1 | R | 8 | Recorded phone message from an auto dialer, compound |
| 1 | R | 4 | Stone (Dwayne Johnson, with "The"); or what you do with a baby's cradle but shouldn't do with a boat, verb, gerund form is a pangram |
| 1 | R | 6 | Ornamental decorative style from the late Baroque |
| 1 | R | 4 | What you do to dice, verb; or Tootsie candy & small bread format, noun |
| 1 | R | 8 | Reduction, noun; or undo a change (such as a price increase or database transaction) verb/noun, compound pangram |
| 1 | R | 7 | Vehicle roof rod to protect against overturning, compound |
| 1 | R | 4 | Chess piece AKA castle |
This site provides clues for a day's New York Times Spelling Bee puzzle. It follows in Kevin Davis' footsteps. The original set of 4,500 clues came from him, and they still make up about three quarters of the current clue set.
The "Bee Roots" approach is to provide explicit clues for root words, not every word. As logophiles, we are pretty good at putting on prefixes and suffixes, changing tense, and forming plurals (including Latin plurals!). The clues cover root words, arranged alphabetically by root word, with a count of words in the puzzle that come from each root. For example, if a puzzle includes ROAM and ROAMING, there will be a clue for ROAM and a count of 2. The root may not appear in the puzzle at all; for example, the 2021-07-23 Bee included ICED, DEICE, and DEICED. For such a puzzle, the clue would be for ICE with a word count of 3.
The Bee Roots approach involves judgement sometimes. For example, if a puzzle includes LOVE, LOVED, and LOVELY, how many roots are needed to cover them? LOVE and LOVED share the root LOVE, certainly, but LOVELY is tricky. LOVE is part of its etymology, but by now, the word means "exquisitely beautiful," which is a lot farther from the meaning of LOVE than swithcing to past tense. I'm inclined to treat LOVE and LOVELY as separate roots. You may not agree, which is fine. Another thing we logophiles share is a LOVE of arguing about words on social media.
A few words can have one meaning as a suffixed form and another as a stand-alone word. EVENING, for example. In those cases I will use the meaning that I think is more common.
One last complication, until another one pops up: a few roots have multiple spellings, for example LOLLYGAG and LALLYGAG. Depending on the day's letters, and maybe even the editor's whims, one or both could be in the puzzle's answer list. With such roots, you could see a word count of 2, even if there are no applicable prefixes or suffixes.
I will do my best to keep this site up to date and helpful (I hope). Check it out, and tweet feedback to @donswartwout Tweet to @donswartwout